


Scapegoat

by serafinawitchwoman



Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-13
Updated: 2016-04-13
Packaged: 2018-06-01 23:00:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6540124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serafinawitchwoman/pseuds/serafinawitchwoman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Amalia Chenkova is not a religious woman. But she may soon need to become one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scapegoat

  
Nights in Alex Reagan's household came in two settings. The first was a thick, heavy silence, like a weighted velvet coat through which one could still feel the drizzling cold of Seattle nights. Damp-on-the-bones, no-one-lives-here silence.  
The second kind of night was a nightmare night.  
It had started innocuously enough. From her place on the pullout couch, Amalia could hear Alex murmuring to herself in that horrible exhausted blurry voice as she dutifully recorded her sleep journal, then the creaking of bedsprings as she tried and failed to settle to sleep. A brief lapse of stillness, even breathing, then the sound of tossing sheets and a faint, whimpering cry, and then her Sasha would pad out into the living room/kitchenette. She would make herself a glass of warm milk, like a child, and sip it in resigned, foggy silence while Amalia lay on the couch and watched through her eyelashes, loath to burden Alex with the worry that her insomnia was keeping her friend awake as well.  
And Alex would finish her drink and plod, zombielike, back to bed, doggedly insisting on sleep, while Amalia crossed her fingers under the blankets and prayed, quietly, for God to give her sweet friend some respite.  
It never worked.  
And it only got worse.  
She only slept less, cried more, got up for work in the morning a little bit later, eyes a little bit dimmer, makeup applied by hands that grew progressively less steady. Sometimes Amalia cried herself, watching Sasha walk out the door with her shoulders hunched so, her clothes rumpled.  
(Alex was not hers any longer, not in the way she had once been, but Amalia would have still gladly walked on burning coals for her. And here, she could do nothing. It killed her.)

  
And then came the scapegoat.

  
It happened in March, when the winds were raw and whipped the rain into a frenzy, but the winter-blasted earth was beginning to recover, tiny green buds peeping out to greet the occasional sun. The nights, however, were still freezing. Amalia, a North Russian, was little more than annoyed by the bleak damp winds, but Alex, her immune system already depressed by fatigue, felt the cold keenly, and curled up under several blankets every night as she tried to sleep. It therefore fell to Amalia to nursemaid her, and whenever she heard the small cries of distress from Alex's room she did what she could; the only thing she could. She folded up another blanket and laid it over her friend's slim frame as she shivered, short dark hair slicked with sweat and arms marked red with shallow scratches, eyes darting frantically beneath their lids.

  
And then, one night, as Amalia lay in bed, drowsily going back over the events of the day, she heard it. A low, awful, grating hiss, like the voice of a snake who hasn't eaten or drunk in years.  
"Azazel. Azazel. Azazel."

  
She ran into Alex's bedroom.  
Amalia had never seen an exorcism in person, but she was properly Westernized enough to have seen _The Exorcist_ –she'd seen it with Sasha on a date night years ago, had held her when she got scared, shook, hid her face in Amalia's neck and half-laughed _Jesus Christ I'm such a baby._ Amalia herself had had nightmares for weeks afterward.  
This was a thousand times worse.  
Alex was tossing and turning, hands clenched in the sheets, eyes open blind and black in the darkness of the room. Bloody foam flecked her mouth like a rabid animal. There were tears on her cheeks.  
"Azazel. Azazel. Azazel."

  
Amalia began to cry, and she screamed but could not breathe to make a sound. It took her a moment to remember where she knew that word–that name. Torah studies, poring over midrash, back home in Russia.  
Azazel. The scapegoat.  
All at once the air came rushing back into her lungs, and she began to pray.

  
"Why, LORD, do you stand far off?"  
Alex froze. Flopped still like a baby with no muscle coordination.  
"Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?"

  
Alex screamed. It was not a human scream. It was a scream with teeth and claws. It ripped holes in the inside of Amalia's head. She stopped praying for half a second, but seeing the thing looking out at her through Sasha's eyes spurred her to start again.  
And so on. _Deliver my darling from the power of the dog. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear..._  
Sasha tore at Amalia's arms with her nails, and shrieked and spat and hissed words she didn't understand in that horrible voice. Amalia's hands bled, and sweat and tears mingled acidly in her eyes, and everything hurt and her ears rang. Psalm 20 91 10 90 127. When would it stop?  
But she thought of Alex, her old friend, sitting at their kitchen table, clutching black coffee and smiling so wide in her oversized sweater that Amalia kissed her right there. Alex in her arms, Alex rubbing her back when she cried, Alex hunched over the mixing board in her office with her tongue touching her upper lip to help her concentrate.  
Amalia put her weight on her hands and prayed and prayed.

It took her a long time to notice that Alex was asleep, the predawn light lending her lovely face the silvery cast of a fairytale princess, slumped into an exhausted stillness. Her eyes did not move. Her breathing was deep and steady.  
"I'll be back in a moment," Amalia whispered, and padded to the bathroom to clean her scratches. As she stood over the sink, a wave of exhaustion came over her so intensely that it was all she could do to stumble back to bed before she fell asleep with her forehead pressed to the back of Alex's neck, fingers laced over her belly.


End file.
